We are just home from Vegas and came home with 788 pictures of young Samantha. Now Darla is a photographer, but about 600 of those came from Jennifer and John's computer. These three pictures are from my IPhone. The first is of her playing with her Fisher Price drum set, the second is of her in a new walker we bought for her while we were there and she is on the new area rug we bought for Jennifer's birthday, and the third is from today at the Tommy Bahama Tropical Cafe at the Las Vegas Town Square shopping center.
I only have about a half hour to work on this. I have a golf meeting tomorrow night, but plan to add more to this Thursday night with many more pictures. This is to wet your appetite. We had a full on blast in Vegas. Jennifer and John have a beautiful house and have made a great home for themselves and our precious Samantha. Samantha, like Jennifer, is wearing size 3-6 months clothes at the age of 8 months. She is so strong and is pulling herself up on everything and on the verge of holding her own bottle. She is too short to get both feet on the ground when using the new walker, but is motoring around on one foot. She sleeps from 8 PM to about midnight, wakes up for a bottle and a changing and then sleeps until about 6 AM. She takes a nap about 10 AM for forty five minutes and then takes a final nap about 3 PM. She is such a happy baby, but at the same time she knows how to turn on the tears to get her way. If she is being held and wants to crawl, she'll give you a little cry and as soon as she is put down, she is back to happy-go-lucky. We only had one night in five when she was fussy and it was a night we were out to dinner at Chili's. It was also the night John chose to take the long way home to show us the spot where the new elementary is going in near their house. Jennifer was also a little pouty over that maneuver. Jennifer and John are both great parents, very protective and patient with Samantha. John is probably a little more over protective, but I'm happy to see him take a strong stand on making sure Samantha is safe at all times. He is definitely wrapped around her little finger and she is Daddy's little girl. He made a remark at dinner the second night at Joe's Crab Shack that had Darla in hysterics. He said that, " the ladies at the day care don't want to come right out and say it, but Samantha is their favorite." Darla played that theme with John for the rest of the weekend.
We got to know John much better this trip, there's nothing like living with someone to get to know them. He is a great guy with a good sense of humor and very serious when it comes to his work and to his family. We had a good laugh with him one night when he was talking about their new dog and how he needed to train him the right way from the start. The dog was jumping up and John said, "We'll just have to nip that in the butt." I looked at him and said, "Did you say, 'Nip that in the "butt"'? He said, "yeah, you know the saying you stop a problem by nipping in in the butt?" I explained the derivation of the saying with regard to a flower and "nipping it in the bud". We continued to have a good laugh at his expense and he got to know the Lyon family perhaps better than he really wanted to.
Their home is in far North Las Vegas about thirty minutes from the strip. John was offered a new job on Friday with a firm that he had interviewed with previously. It is a company that specializes in home security systems, alarms, etc. They will also do full entertainment systems and video surveillance, etc. and are looking for someone with John's expertise beyond the normal scope of just alarm installations. He is thrilled to have been offered the position and went in this morning to take care of all his paperwork. He starts on a new project tomorrow.
Jennifer's job is going great. I totally misunderstood her when she explained her job. She is working on a new project in Las Vegas called "City Center". It is the new casino complex next to the Bellagio and sandwiched in the middle of it is the Jockey Club. We saw the project from it's beginning as back on Dad's 70th birthday we saw what the boys described as "ground zero" outside the Jockey on what used to be their parking lot. Jennifer is working now on the mezzanine level of one of the buildings on the project pulling wiring and handling all of the low voltage work. She has a crew of apprentices that report to her and she handles some of the project management on her portion of the job. She absolutely loves her job and works 6 AM to 2:30 PM daily. Actually, she is Union, so they begin packing up at 2 PM and have what is known as a "15 minute walkoff" starting at 2:15 PM. She just got a great raise effective September 1st. John is non-union and the advantage to him is vacation and sick time. Jennifer does not get paid if she doesn't work, but her per hour is significantly higher. She also has excellent health, dental and vision benefits for her and Samantha. John will make the going rate if he works on union jobs. The kids are doing really well and I'm ready to plan a wedding in Vegas come Spring, eh Jennifer..John? They are talking about it and I'm thrilled.
We had a really good intense visit with the kids and Samantha. Jennifer wanted to get her mother-in-law to watch Samantha and go out on the town one night. Maybe next time, this time was Samantha Time. We went to the park near their house for a barbecue, we went to the YMCA swimming pool on Saturday and watched Sam swim, we went out to dinner and lunch a couple of times, visited the Town Center complex today with it's park in the center and kid's play area. It was tough to say goodbye today, but we left with full hearts and some tremendous memories and look forward to going back soon. I'll add more pictures Thursday. These were from today:
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